And Deez, I haven't been to Germany in 18 years so I'm sure it's changed significantly, as well as many other once really beautiful spotless cities. Like the Indian in the commercial from a long time ago, I would probably cry if I saw Geneva and Zurich being trashed.
I'm not sure where in Germany you were, but the rural areas are still beautiful, as are the rivers, though the Rhine is overly touristy and crowded. Visit the Mosel instead.
The big difference is in the cities. When I first visited Munich in 2010, it was immaculate. When I first moved to Wiesbaden in 2012, it was pretty clean as well. Far less so now. You'll see more panhandling bums like you would in a US city and far more graffiti and other forms of vandalism. And of course, European cities used to pride themselves on being extremely safe and almost completely free of violent crime. Not so anymore. People aren't getting shot, but they are getting stabbed. And of course, sexual assault has gone up dramatically, even if local authorities try to cover it up.
Public transit has also gone down. One thing I noticed in 2010 is that German trains and buses (even local ones in major cities) were extremely clean. Again, outside the cities, they often still are, but in the cities and even many suburbs? No. They're often dirty and smelly.
And Germans are so fastitious and orderly. You know it kills them to see it, but they've had Nazi guilt and white guilt beaten into them so badly that they don't do anything about it. If they didn't have that guilt, virtually no political party that isn't the AfD would exist.
